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A new 16mm camera


Pavan Deep

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I thought I’d start a new thread about whether there's a need for a new 16mm camera, bearing in mind that there’s a huge difference between want and need. Would a new smaller and simpler 16mm camera be popular, I suppose it has to be affordable which might be impossible, but it doesn’t have to be elaborate with tons of features, a single speed of 24fps, natively Super 16, small and light for easy loading of 100ft daylight spool.

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Not a problem with modern electronics, I don't think, but it does need to run at 25 for non-US TV.

I wonder if shooting 16mm at 24 outside the US was always a bit of a rarity. We did it at film school, but that's because we were pretending to make proper movies, and save 4% on stock and process.

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57 minutes ago, Pavan Deep said:

a single speed of 24fps

making a multi speed crystal sync system is almost the same amount of work than single speed if using modern electronics.

the difference is that one needs different user interface if there is multiple selectable speeds. The user interface design requires more design work and more components for speed selector controls which drives the price up a little. But other than that, there is really not much of an difference between a 2 speed and a 12 speed system. Personally I decide the speed preset options by determining which kind of user interface is the most practical and which kind of selectors can be fitter to the design. Most of my newer designs are thus either 6 speed or 12 speed models with the 12 speed being the most common.

I would advice compromising on the size of the camera to keep the costs down enough to make it available and ease the design work a lot. It helps with the soundproofing too and it is MUCH easier to fit a suitable standard motor inside the camera without needing to find a incredibly compact, difficult to get and very expensive special motor for it.

This design is most likely for sound use and thus it is important to make it silent enough to allow sound capabilities. So I would really not try to make it extremely small, at least not the first versions. The small size requirement complicates the desing so much that it may even ruin the whole project if only few ones are to be sold so that the profit margin is very small and extremely high risks (one does not want complicated design and very expensive components if having a financially risky project. A standard affordable motors MUST do for the design)

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I know I would love a modern take on the Arri 16S. Would be great if a soft barney could be fitted, but ultimately if someone made the camera someone would figure out the barney. I would hope for spare parts availability though since Im sure I'd use it for things Im unwilling to risk my other cameras on (motorcycle, stunts, crash cam etc). It would also just be nice to have an S size camera one could take around to steal shots and / or film some home movies on. Its a bit much to shoulder up an SR3 for home movies at christmas. To keep the price down I know I, and I think most of us, could live without a pressure plate mag and just thread the thing. 

I do wonder what pricing could be sustained given that the economy may be about to faceplant here in the states. $7500 USD and I'd buy immediately, but that pricing may be fantasy thinking. it would certainly be nice if such a thing could come in under 15k USD, though I wonder if at that price the only buyers would be rental houses, rich collectors, and the odd person or two who has a specific application for said proposed camera. 

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The Arri 16S SM M SB etc, is not a great camera to start from, it's a loud design, overly complicated, poor viewfinder system that is a design flaw. 

The K3 is a far simpler design. If a proper gate, pressure plate, pulldown and sprocket drive is designed, the camera would be awesome. 

I'd build the entire housing out of plastic. Use a very nice high speed motor so you could do 3 - 75fps no problem. Design a very nice small electronics package and integrated video tap. Use a common battery like from Sony or Canon DSLR cameras. It would need to be a 5v system, which is not difficult if the movement is smooth. Have a nice digital counter integrated. Decent internal optical and digital meter. The viewfinder would probably be similar to the original K3, as it's inexpensive to do. However, sticking a monitor on top would be easy with built in cheese plate on the handle. So you'd mostly use the monitor, but have the ability to also use an optical viewfinder if ya want it. 

I'd make it have interchangeable lens mounts. It would have a flat plate and you could screw in PL, C, M42, EOS, Nikon etc. This way you can use any lenses you want. The camera comes with "one" mount, but you could order mounts online for $250/each. 

It wouldn't be sync-sound quiet due to daylight spools, but I bet it could be as quiet as a EBM or EL. It would need sound damping all the way around, which is why I think the housing may have to be bigger than the original K3, but lighter of course. 

The only way to sell it, would be to get the price near the current used prices of small S16 cameras. So in the $4k - $5k range.

So you'd have to make 1000 pieces. Which is a big ask. 

I don't think you could build it in the US, but you would do final checks (flange depth, calibration, run-in, boxing) in the US. This way you could insure, every camera was perfect and not worry about the manufacturer mucking that up. 

I would have a parts kit and service manual available for purchase. I'd also release software to program the board yourself in that kit. So people could modify and service their own cameras. Teach people how to do things properly, let them buy the tools and maintain their own cameras. Some spare parts would be available on the website as well, but not all. 

Cost would have to be $3k/camera, not a penny more. I know it sounds crazy, but for 1000 pieces, I think it would be possible due to the quantity. You'd have to keep 100 cameras as just parts. So you'd only have 900 finished pieces and you'd have to give away around 50 cameras to key customers as testers. So let's say you're going to sell 850 total. You'd sell them pre-release for $4k and retail for $5k. So an average selling price of $4500. 

So could ya sell 850 cameras for $4k - $5k? 

Honestly, I think you could. If the camera did everything I stated above. 

However, it would take a long time. Once a few hundred were sold by the people who really wanted one, I think the rest would sit for a while, possibly a few years. You'd have to give away 50 bodies or so, to reviewers and young filmmakers for marketing purposes. 

So by my math, it would cost around $500k to get a prototype made (run the company) and around $3M to build the 1000 models. So we're looking at an investment of 3.5M.  If you gave away 50, kept 100 as parts and sold 850 for $4.5k (average price) you'd get back 3.8M. That's not horrible really, especially if you had an investor who was willing to give away that money. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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3 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I would have a parts kit and service manual available for purchase. I'd also release software to program the board yourself in that kit. So people could modify and service their own cameras. Teach people how to do things properly, let them buy the tools and maintain their own cameras. Some spare parts would be available on the website as well, but not all.

that does not work at all for an average user and a very capable programming oriented user would just steal the design and build a better one by themself. Additionally there is not even any reason to add this user-reprogramming feature to the camera if it is done right in the first place. Aaand special purpose embedded systems like movie camera speed controllers are extremely limited in how they can be altered from the ideal configuration because most alterations will require physical hardware changes which are way out of the scope of any end user's capabilities. Practically no one needs this customisation feature if the camera is just made right in the first place and if it is made right from the beginning, no one would even need to alter it anyway ? .

Changing a complete readily programmed circuit board to a other similar one is not an issue for end users so this could be made possible in the design and spare parts made available. Though a properly made board should last for 20 years or more so the demand for spare parts would be extremely low

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9 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Na, it's a hodgepodge thrown together camera that doesn't solve any of the major problems of the K3 sadly. 

the K3 does not have very well made mechanical parts including the movement and gears. So by my opinion it would not be the most ideal choice as a base for a more expensive camera even if the new hybrid model would have advanced features. The movement is just not worth 4k by my opinion and the bearings etc. are not made for shooting large amounts of film, they will wear down pretty quickly and then the movement will be even more clunky and unstable.

if Kinor16cx cameras would be more common, I would probably take the movement block from those. much better than K3 and pin registered. they were cheap when they were available but very rare nowadays. the quick change mags are pretty ok too for the price. The motor of the Kinors is bs but the camera system itself is pretty fine

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23 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

the K3 does not have very well made mechanical parts including the movement and gears. So by my opinion it would not be the most ideal choice as a base for a more expensive camera even if the new hybrid model would have advanced features. The movement is just not worth 4k by my opinion and the bearings etc. are not made for shooting large amounts of film, they will wear down pretty quickly and then the movement will be even more clunky and unstable.

Well yea, the K4 camera is not a great idea. 

The Kinor design is overly complicated, not much of a fan. It needs to be super simple and don't need a registration pin, if the gate is built properly. The more parts you add, the higher the manufacturing cost. So it needs to be very simple.

I would absolutely "update" the movement. Maybe even slam an Aaton design pulldown claw. 

In terms of selling service kits, here in the states, it's very popular for people to service their own cameras. People will want to do that, especially if you sell the tools. I'm not talking about pulling the movement apart, I'm talking about basic CLA stuff. 

The electronics being serviceable I think is also good. Even though I agree, it shouldn't be necessary, it gives people confidence in buying a camera, even if it does nothing but allow you to adjust settings. 

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1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

 The electronics being serviceable I think is also good. Even though I agree, it shouldn't be necessary, it gives people confidence in buying a camera, even if it does nothing but allow you to adjust settings. 

I think the only reasonable way to make SMD circuit boards serviceable is to make them quick swappable so that one can change the entire boards instead of trying to replace a single component.

Trying to repair single tiny smd components on a circuit board has a pretty high risk of ruining the board entirely (for example burning or otherwise ruining the tiny copper tracks, separating layers, damaging vias, adding more heat stress to the undamaged components, etc.) and thus I rarely do it even for my own boards unless it is something extremely simple and fast to do (otherwise I will just assemble a new board instead and replace the whole board).

I am also using larger components than most factory made smd boards have, for example I use 1206 resistors which are couple of times larger than the ones used on most commercial boards (which mainly seem to use 04 or 06 sizes) . This 1206 choice is specifically for making hand soldering the parts a bit easier  but removing them is much harder than installing them and may not be worth it if there is more than one ruined component. Even when using the larger smd parts it is not easy to repair the smd boards and if the boards are using the smaller more common parts then it may be almost impossible to do by hand without damages.

Additionally resistors are pretty sturdy and it is pretty sure that if one would fry any camera boards, the first ruined components would be the microcontrollers and the display devices, and the hybrid ic's if the design uses ones. Those happen to be the types of components which are the most difficult to replace: the display devices because it is difficult to find similar enough replacement that works with the exactly same driver inside (different driver needs different software libraries so you would need change the firmware of the camera with potentially needing to write some firmware by yourself from scratch),  AND the microcontroller which are sold blank and do nothing unless you have the exactly same software version available for it and also a means to upload the said software to the microcontroller (which is way out of the scope of normal user's capability though electronics enthusiasts may be able to do that reliably if having enough time and proper tools) . Microcontrollers could of course be sold as a replacement parts already containing the needed software in them but removing the old microcontroller from the circuit board and installing a new one is pretty difficult especially if it is a tiny smd part and has lots of risks because of the large pin count and fragile soldering tabs on board which easily separate from the board base if trying to take the old fried controller off.

So I would say that selling replacement components is theoretically possible but it is so highly impractical that it does not make sense for the reason that the circuit boards are generally not worth repairing if they get damaged and it is more practical and safe to replace the whole board instead.

Why not use traditional through the hole components instead of the smaller smd ones? The through the hole versions are easier to solder in place and remove but they are up to 5 times larger than the SMD counterparts or even more. If the electronics need to be compact it is impractical to make everything with THT components, additionally it complicates the circuit board design unnecessarily and it is more expensive as well without much real gain in reliability. And one can't use the most ideal parts for the design because most better parts are only sold in smd packages. AND it still does not make sense to make the boards highly serviceable if replacing parts on them creates high risk of permanently damaging the board base leading to still needing a new board...

Edited by aapo lettinen
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11 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

I think the only reasonable way to make SMD circuit boards serviceable is to make them quick swappable so that one can change the entire boards instead of trying to replace a single component.

Nobody is doing board level work. When I mean serviceable I mean firmware updates, configuration and standard connectors with more industry standard formatting of what goes through each connector. It’s super easy to do on the design, so few companies do. This way in 40 years when the boards are all toast, it’s super easy to make a new one. 

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By my experience it is often more practical to design a completely new crystal sync control system for a movie camera than try to reverse engineer the original one and replace half of the outdated parts in it, some of which are antique and no modern replacement is even available.

It helps if the camera has enough room inside it to enable installing slightly different boards so it helps to make the camera more serviceable if the electronics are not minituarized to the extreme.

One can reasonably assume that the electronics in a camera manufactured now should survive something like 15 or even 20 years. After that there might be something wrong with it, or it might work perfectly fine. If you need to repair something, you may change the circuit boards and the motor or one of them. The motor maybe replaced sooner if the bearings go dry. That would probably give you another 15 to 20 years. After which most of the persons who purchased the camera have either died from natural causes or there is no film available anymore and it does not matter then if the camera works or not.

So I would expect one would need to repair the boards once in the camera's lifetime and the motor maybe twice or more depending on how much it is used. It is perfectly viable to supply this once-in-the-cameras-lifetime board update by offering readily made replacement boards and no needing to bother the customer with the need of writing their own firmware or anything :)

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20 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Nobody is doing board level work. When I mean serviceable I mean firmware updates, configuration and standard connectors with more industry standard formatting of what goes through each connector. It’s super easy to do on the design, so few companies do. This way in 40 years when the boards are all toast, it’s super easy to make a new one. 

board level work is often considered first when people try to repair something.

however it is pretty practical if the connections between the boards are somehow tried to be standardized even a little bit. Personally I am often using analogue controls or simple on-off style digital connections between boards to make them easier to be connected together in different configurations  (the more common method is to use different types of serial data controls between boards but that is often less reliable method in my applications ) . This type of simple communication method between boards makes it theoretically possible to design a replacement for a board 20 years later without knowing exactly how it communicates: it can be figured out pretty easily if having enough electronics background and then a completely new replacement can be made using dozens of different methods.

Finding out how a more complicated serial communication protocol between boards works would require either the original engineering documentation, OR one would need to have a fully working device to be able to probe the signals to find out what data is send back and forth between boards. The issue is, if one ever would need to design a replacement board it means that the device is already broken and no data can be probed from it anymore ?   one could of course try to find a similar working device to test the signals but it is still much more difficult than figuring out a simple analogue control logic or couple of on-off connections between boards ?

Edited by aapo lettinen
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well... this happened https://www.logmar.dk/galapagos/

in the 25k territory I kinda think a 400' mag option is necessary. I really dont want to keep nitpicking at logmar, but at this price point we're into new car territory and competing with used SR3s with 400' mags. 

Alternatively I would wonder if any features could be sacrificed to bring the price down (though admittedly they had my attention at rotating disc shutter)

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Yea, I made a post on the other thread. I'm sad they keep making announcements and backing down. I would never tell anyone about a camera until it was a finished prototype ready to roll, then show it to people way before announcing it. Going about this the crowd funding way, where you announce a concept and then expect people to pay, just doesn't work unless you have a prototype. 

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